Sloan Creative

Today, Peter turned 7. Katie and I are both a bit befuddled by the pace of it all.

7 more years and he’ll be 14, almost ready to drive. Another 7 and he’s 21, standing at a bar somewhere far from home ordering a beer.

Until then, here’s our little man, and his sisters, at school today.

Here’s a drawing/card I made for his birthday. It shows how I feel about this birthday… at 7 he’s ready with his bike, nordic skis, fins (the blue things), his writing, reading, and numbers, books and camera to set out on the adventure of life… towards driving, moving out, travel, and who knows what hills, valleys, and summits beyond.

Click for a larger version.

His birthday this year is a wistful mix of pride, excitement, and sadness that he’s growing up so fast and so well.

See his blog here www.scg411.com/pjs

I created this video for the Trust for Working Landscapes and made it available on-line.

It was surprisingly easy to do with software that comes free on most computers. I used Microsoft Movie Maker, but there are a number of great options out there.

Download the film

It’s a large (28 Meg) Windows media file.

I could have posted it to YouTube, but that would reduce the quality so I chose to have it streamed by Yahoo.

I’ve just created a new blog focussed on the many benefits of using blogs as the basis for an organization’s web site.

I called it The Sloan Blog About Blogs

It’s based on my years of web development and consulting experience, as well as my more recent experience with blog software. In fact, this entire site is built within a blog.

If I can help in any way, let me know.

Here’s a site full of interesting ideas.

www.lifehacker.com

here’s a guy who’s pushing the envelope in terms of using technology to live an interesting, productive life.

www.fourhourworkweek.com

I find his blog the most interesting part of all this. To get a sense of how and who he is, watch his chat with Google staff in London.

Hi everyone, I guess I was wrong. Jott (John) has a world press(?) rank (Wordpress link), so that I can call from my cell phone and have ended(?) (it end) up directly on my blog format it (formatted) correctly. This is my first test. See you soon, Steven (Stephen). listen

Powered by Jott

PS. Well, it’s not perfect, but it’s interesting

Content-Disposition: inline

Hi everyone,
I am writing to you that right now while I’m driving I’m calling th=
e
Jott computer off my cell phone and to is dictating what I say.

How
could you use this technology to make your life more efficient and
simpler?

The service is free and like all good technology it seems =
like
magic. www.jott.com

See yo=
u soon,

Stephen B=E1rczay Sloan

Consulting
=
Photography
Tutoring
www.scg411.c=
om

Clearly, the formatting needs some help.

PS. I tried to send directly to the blog, rather than cutting and pasting the text into another email to the blog, but Jott adds too much blog-confusing code to the email to get it displayed correctly. Ah, well. It’s probably best to have one quick editorial step between my brain and cyberspace.

In conversation yesterday with community leader Sallie Maron we touched upon an interesting insight.

Bainbridge Island, like so many small towns, has recently seen a building boom seemingly without end.

Buildings and angst rising

As the new homes, shops, and condos went up, so did our level of angst. The “place” we moved to was being altered and, in some cases, unceremoniously destroyed by heavy equipment.

We felt the anguish of loss, but also found ourselves fairly inarticulate when it came to expressing what we’d lost.

I’ve been thinking about this situation for years now (with my friend Dennis Vogt and others) and realized that it’s hard to protect what we can’t articulate. We also realize that a picture is worth… well, you know.

A community photo album

In a recent meeting with Barry Peters about what we might do to help preserve our sense of place, we discussed a community project to begin defining what we love about our place, this island.

Many of us now have digital cameras. As we stroll, bike or paddle, we could snap images of what we love as we notice it. Here are some shots I took on a walk in the Grand Forest in 2006.

The images we take could be collected and posted on-line, maybe even on a map like the Sound Foods site, so they were available, and accessible, to all.

Gradually, we would build a library of the images that we can use in future discussions about proposed changes to our place.

What if the architectural review board had a library of what we love about our island home? The folks who designed Harbor Square would have had an easy reference for the community and context in which they were working. Might the result have been different, maybe even better; more alive?

This community photo album might create a reference tool for us to use when talking about place. Wouldn’t the thinking about Winslow way, or Kallgren, Grow, or North Madison have been a bit easier if we were working from a set of shared, loved images?

Is our place history or is history our place?
The other day, when I realized that the Historical Society was looking for ways to increase it’s fund raising abilities it became clear that relevance and visibility would be the keys to their success. It’s a lot easier to ask for money when you’ve got your finger on the button that gives (or protects) what potential donors value.

I thought, “Who better to host a community conversation about this place than the Historical Society?”

History is the story of how we became this place. What we love and don’t about the island is simply the sum total of all the outcomes of prior events… history

• We need to collect and catalog what we want to protect. Isn’t that what museums do well?
• We need to teach our community about this place; what made it and what makes it unique. Don’t museums have an education role too?
• We need to tie stories to these places. Couldn’t we link oral histories to the photos and the map, yielding a deep, rich source of connection to the the unique place we live? Museums often do this work too.

I know the Historical Society has a lot on it’s plate already. But, it seems to me, the top priority remains increasing relevance and visibility.

A deeper connection

We all want to feel more connected to our homes, our neighborhoods, and to something longer and deeper than our daily bustle through life.

This is the promise of history… a deeper connection to the time and space we live in. History gives current events context and richness, it gives that funny tree on Eriksen, a story with a beginning, a middle, and a sad end. But, it’s an end that teaches, that warns, that inspires new actions tomorrow. It all starts with the connection, the re-weaving across time and space that seem to separate us.

As Emerson says, in his essay “History”,

In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains, and waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his thought.

The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow–beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English, between Classic and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic.

When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, — when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do, as it were, run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?”

Most of us who move to Bainbridge Island seek a deeper connection with a mysterious unity; call it Nature, call it community, call it what you will, but you know the feeling.

As we begin to notice, collect and catalog those reminders of unity we’ve found here on the island we will increasingly appreciate all that we’ve found.

Of course, appreciate has two meanings:

1 a: to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of

2: to increase the value of

I’ll see you on the path toward appreciation, camera in hand.

Thinking more, thinking better

I came across John Medina’s Brain Rules the other day on the radio… his enthusiasm and clarity were quite engaging. I jotted down the title for my next book shopping adventure and filed his name away in my mind under, “Interesting.”

Applied to child development

Separately this week, I learned of the Talaris Institute and their work to “provide research-based products and services that enhance parent effectiveness in the first six years of life.” Putting the latest findings in brain research into the hands of those who can really make a difference with it.

Later, I put the two together and realized that John Medina was the founder of Talaris.  Fun!

Learning to learn better

Of course, this is all interesting to me, with three children, 6 weeks to 6 years old, and a never-ending study habit.

I was happy to notice that the first rule is exercise, because it has some interesting resonance for me:

• Our children’s school has the children out on a long walk every day of the year, snow or shine and teaches math by movement games, using the children’s entire bodies to soak up the relationships between numbers.
• Thomas Jefferson, in his letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785, suggests that he devote 2 hours daily to walking, as an integral part of his studies.
• I usually get my best ideas walking in the woods near our house. Luckily, technology makes it easy to capture them, using a digital voice recorder and dictation software means that, now, you can write anywhere and have it end up on-line quickly.

Another interesting rule is #6: Long Term Memory- remember to repeat which, combined with rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses, reminds me of the Method of Loci as described in The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, the story of a Jesuit who traveled to China and taught the technique there.  I don’t imagine that it would matter if the vision was through our physical or mind’s eye.

So, these brain rules are great for giving kids solid foundations and keeping the elderly functioning, but what about those of us in the middle of our lives?

Life long learning

Can we still develop our minds, or did all that stop when we traded our dorm rooms for cubicles?

I stumbled upon the fact that the average college student in this country spends only 3.1 hours per day on “educational activities.” What? Even working full time, I could slip that in between the kid’s and my own bedtimes. You mean I could keep study as much as I did in college my entire working life?

Recently, I read an inspiring book by A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life in which he states that one can do a large amount of deeply intellectual work in just 2 hours per day. If you could be a contributing intellectual in addition to your current work, would you?

So much of how I think today I have learned post college, it saddens me to read that most Americans either don’t read or haven’t practiced enough to read proficiently.

Use it or lose it

What can we do to start using our brains more and more effectively? If we fail to use and develop our own minds, we may just lose the right to do so… as those who do think start doing more and more of our thinking for us. See Giambattista Vico’s New Science for a fascinating look at how this might play out in our society, as it did for the Romans.

My new mental jungle gym is the Great Books of the Western World. Amazingly fun. The Syntopicon alone is worth the price of admission. Much more on this later.

That’s all for now.

Feel free to return to the book you were reading before you landed here.

When I was four, my father started a business.

While I was young he was building that business. It took everything he would give it. With five kids, he had little choice but to succeed. Of course, it all came at a cost.

After college, and some time travelling and in real estate, I negotiated to buy my father’s business. He was burned out. I was 24 years old, younger than most of the employees, but I was committed to earning my money before I had a family.

I ran that business up, via organic and M&A growth, to $5 million in revenues, doubling revenue while doubling productivity all while Office Depot and Staples spent hundreds of millions trying to put us, and others, out of business. I sold that business in 2000, the year before our first child was born.

Before I sold it, I bought a small marketing firm, and started a software company… my lily pads.

Now, I’ve closed the software firm (not every venture succeeds, but every ventures teaches!) and I’ve sold the marketing side of Sloan Creative Group to my key employee.

Now, I do what I love.

I help small business (and NGO) leaders live the lives and have the businesses they desire. I know the hopes, the sacrifices, the worries, and the rewards. I’ve learned the skills required for success.

Why I work on an hourly basis:

• It keeps things affordable, controlled, and flexible for my clients
• It lets me control my schedule and commitments
• It lets me move quickly through projects, the way I work best; intensely on, intensely off.

As I write this, in my little office shed out in the yard (my jobba hut), I hear our children playing in the yard. I see the sun shining over the Grand Forest and the Brothers. It’s a long way from my days zooming down freeways multi-tasking.

I’ve arrived, but I know that there are fellow travelers, like you, who could use a hand here and there from someone who’s been down the road before.

Contact me if there’s anyway I can help, or if you’d just like to chat.

The malaise

The overwhelming pile of unproductive details and frustrations created by

the demands of customers, vendors, governments, employees and simple logistical reality

lead to confusion, distraction, and discouragement and away from the energy and clarity to execute your creative vision.

The antidote
A weekly two-hour conversation might help balance out the 40-plus hours of other, often distracting influences. I enjoy the process of helping you return to clarity and motivation about your most important and valuable work.

Free samples
Contact us to set up free half-hour sample session.

Wondering if you deserve help?

If your most valuable employee suffered from the bolded items above, investing 5% of their time in staying focussed and motivated would simply seem like good, caring leadership.

You are your most valuable employee. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself and your business to stay focused on your highest and best creative work?

Free sample

Contact me for a free half-hour sample session.